The present invention relates to Internet conferences and presentations. More particularly it relates to defining variables used in a multi-lingual Internet presentation system.
Today, audiences including thousands of participants in the world can attend conferences and presentations broadcast by the Internet network. During such a presentation, the participant can view visual objects such as charts, slides, images, graphics (generally in PowerPoint) and listen to prerecorded audio recordings associated with each visual object.
In general, the speaker who is in charge of adding audio comments to the visual object, does not assemble the final deliverable contents but could, via access to the Internet web pages, invoke the assembly process. The assembly is normally done by a third party who has the skills in creating the synchronized objects or an automatic system.
But there are many problems associated with creating a presentation having a synchronized audio recording to the visual objects. Thus, the speaker should have a ready access to equipment like a recording machine, a microphone or a PC with audio support to create the recording. An alternative is to go to a recording studio and to use facilities there, but this is not always immediately available and it is an expensive solution. If the user chooses to use a tape recorder, the third party which receives this media should have similar equipment available to replay the recording.
But, from its initial creation stage to its final published form, there can be many variants of the web deliverable presentation that end users view. During the initial stages of creation, there may be no audio available, so a set of web pages needs to be created so that the content creator can view the slides in a web format to proof read the contents. At some later stage, there may be added audio which uses generating another set of web pages which is different from the first one since it now includes audio.
If different types of audio streaming support are allowed, this again changes the format of the web pages and the number of web pages that have to be created.
Also, creators have differing requirements and as technology changes, and there may be other variables added. These variables can be the language of the audio, the different sizes of graphics, a survey, the presenter name, a title, a biography, an index of the slides, etc.
All these permutations consume large amounts of time in creating for each presentation its own unique set of HTML pages. Also, a simple change like an increase in the number of slides requires considerable rework. For example, xe2x80x9cthe export as HTML pagesxe2x80x9d function in a Freelance Graphic presentation will create 92 HTML pages for a 30 slide presentation. For Power Point, the similar function will create 72 HTML pages. Furthermore, these pages have only the basic navigation feature and do not include the required HTML functions for streaming audio.
Accordingly, an aspect of the invention is to achieve a method of defining previously all the variables to be used in a multi-lingual presentation without requiring HTML pages for each presentation for which different variables are used.
The invention provides therefore methods, apparatus and systems for defining variables to be used in a multi-lingual presentation system accessed by the Internet network wherein a plurality of visual objects such as charts or slides controlled by a third party in a server can be accessed by any user of the Internet network having a workstation. The visual objects are each associated with an audio recording in a language selected amongst several predetermined languages. This method includes in creating a control file including all the variables defining all the parameters of a presentation requested by a user of the Internet network, the variables being defined in the control file previously to the presentation.